Before I go ahead and tell you all about the show and everything else, I’m going to fill you in on a few details. E and I have broken up, for good. I found it hard enough dealing with the addiction, absences, hot and cold behaviour and debt. Then I found out something so much worse. I’ve been debating whether to talk about it on here, afraid of airing my laundry to all. But this is REALITY. This is real. I want to be a part of breaking the stigma behind addictions and what really goes on. This is worse than any film. It’s pure darkness and I’m not keeping quiet about it, as so many people do. Families and loved ones suffer in shame and silence.
E has been selling himself to men for drugs. I can’t believe I’m actually writing this. My boy.
I found out and then he admitted it to me. This is a big hexagonal sharp-edged hard pill to swallow, as I hoped he was getting clean and that we were waiting for each other. I am loyal to him. I give him everything I have. Addiction I could just about work with but this? No. The reason why I am being open is to show you all an unedited version of events; this is where addiction takes almost everyone. This is a situation I heard from from many straight men, who got desperate for money, for drugs and turned to selling themselves to men. It rips everything from you, all self-worth, partners. family, jobs, friends. It also destroys everyone around the addict. He said he just lays there lifeless. It is the quickest way for a young male to make money. Sex with men for money. My stomach is churning. This is the man I love and am loyal to. How do I process this? He said he doesn’t want to be clean as then he will have to process it all. His messages describe how he’s desperate for money, not well enough to work all the time, it’s like crime, he doesn’t want to do it but he has to. He doesn’t want to live without me but how can I go back after all this? What about me? The spotlight is always on the addict. This is supposed to be a trip of a lifetime. It’s very lonely in China, nobody speaking a word of English, while I’m going through this intense time.
As soon as I found out the truth, everything began fitting in place. Every little event and lie that puzzled me. This hurts so much and I’m taking valium to ease the panic. Then he asked for money to stop him doing it. He says he loves me with all his heart and I’m the only one. I think he does but I’m not the only one, am I? I feel sick thinking about it and I have to let go. Is this actually real? Drugs and male prostitution? For ‘Shotters’ to stay at his house and go on drug runs? Shotters are basically drug dealers and they stick thousands of pounds of crack and smack up their arses, stay over at at someones house and then (E) whoever else puts the drugs in their mouths (gross) and takes it to cats (addicts). I think this is right. Drugs won. Now what? It’s taken my mother and it’s taken him. Goodbye E. I loved you with all my heart. I need a gin, sigh.
The rest of the writing below is prior to finding this information. I am in Jingdezhen, China and you will see the run up to leaving HK in this post. I am planning to visit as many pottery producing cities all over China. I will also be researching the Opium Wars and visiting towns renowned for opium smuggling and tea horse trails. My experiences with Opium and Porcelain and the links between the UK and China, is somehow all fitting in place. I will research trading, processes and the lives of the individuals involved in it all. Every little bag imported, ruins lives of not only the individual but all the people around them. Maybe the punishment in the UK isn’t enough? Maybe NA doesn’t work for everyone. It can only work if you work it. My mother is dying. He has gone. Britain needed porcelain (and tea) so much for our little tea sets, we had all that Opium to exchange. The Uk was the big dealer. We ruined the lives of many in China by that move.
Before I knew it all (below)
The morning of the show, E overdosed. I had to keep him on Skype as he went in and out of consciousness, waiting for his friend to call the ambulance. The connection kept going and I thought he was going to die. I’ve always expected him to die soon, it’s so sad. He had taken heroin, crack and a few valium tablets. The ambulance gave him a shot to reverse the heroin OD. When he came around his speech was slurred and slow. He used again (I think) and went to work a couple of hours later. I felt very anxious and people at the hostel had to calm me down.
The rehearsal for the performance went really well, much better than on the night! Below is a little installation at the bar where we had a meeting. It’s supposed to be footage taken from surveillance cameras placed around the building, with some odd and dramatic situations occurring.
The install for the exhibition had the usual hiccups. We had technical issues with leads and media players (the menu options were written in Chinese), the standard stuff get on your nerves install stuff.
This little man (Leslies son) let me play with his toys. Although he wouldn’t let the monkey ride on the truck.
I tried to clam myself down and focus on the rest of the install and compose myself for the people coming to the event. This was a really hard thing to do as my mind was elsewhere. I watched the audience as they watch the videos. For the first time I actually became tearful watching them, even thought I’d spent so long in those situations, filming and editing too.
I had two video projections and two videos playing on screens. The first video projection was of E, life with a user. This is called ‘I need you to tell me what to do’. It had conversations running over the top of using imagery and text. It was projected on the wall. There were a couple of steps for people to sit down to watch the film. I decided to have this work in a closed off room, so people could chose whether to watch it or not. This also made sense as the addict often hides away. There were long sections where E keeps trying to focus on the camera, then his eyes roll to the back of his head, then one eye will stay into another direction. He remembers to try to focus on the camera again.
For the opening I wore a dress. A gold dress.
People said the video with E had a huge impact on them, followed by lots of questions about using. It considers the person sitting with the addict as much as it focusses on the addict. At points in the video I would ask ‘Where are you E?’. A very quiet and muffled response from here saying ‘Here.’, as he slumps forward. At other points I hold his hand through it and check his pulse from behind the camera. He tries to reach out to stroke my leg as he hears my tears. I have to move my leg to him to stoke because he is unable to reach. This caress is jittery, out of touch with reality and somewhat detached.
Most people asked me if I had ever used heroin. The answer is no. I must admit I came close a few times as I wanted to be with him. I tried in every way possible to pull him out of the madness but you can’t help someone, they have to help themselves. I had to do the cliched thing of picking up the camera, then there was a purpose for all of this and also a distance between the drugs and myself. I’ve realised that an addict cannot maintain a healthy relationship, as they are angry at the world. Mostly this is a cover for being angry themselves and having unmanageably in their own lives, due to addiction.
The video also showed my patience as I’m being interrogated.
‘Who are you with?’, ‘What are you doing Lisa? and ‘I don’t believe you’. This is not the same man I feel in love with. Now I am communicating with a drug, which has taken him away. The using sections were spliced with footage of me scrubbing the bathroom and listening to self-help videos.
The second video piece ‘Radicals and Straight Edges’ was installed in the same closed off room. During the bathroom scene, in the first film, I was waiting for E to come home after scoring. He needed it to be well, to get to work, to get on with life. I used to get very anxious during these times, feeling like I couldn’t gain control of the situation. I also couldn’t bare to watching the man I loved slowly killing himself.
The communication was sporadic. Sometimes he would want to end it all, then I wouldn’t hear from him and anxiously clean and pace around. Then there was anger at needing money. Then watching him, sitting with him, like a zombie with boiled egg white eyes. Every part of being in a relationship with an addict is lonely. I wondered how it became this? I’m a lecturer at Art University and I have to deal with heroin addicts. The people who are closest to me, reject me for drugs, because they HAVE to use to be well. A detox is way worse than any film will show you. They are like babies, not talking, sweating and unable to do anything but squirm in their own sweat and horrors. E usually doesn’t get past day 2, so after all the efforts and caring, I end up pacing around the flat and calling everyone I know for support. As I went to collect all the bits he needed from the shop, I ran home and received a text saying ‘Sorry’. He’s gone back to it. Again. After a while, everyone gets fed up of listening to the cycle. I had the choice to leave but felt unable to.
I can’t stop thinking that each little bag of heroin and crack, ruins families and takes away the ability to love completely. I may be naive thinking this but this is based on my experience.
As I scrubbed the bathroom, I knew this was the end of my home. I had to move out as I had been paying double rent and bills since I suddenly had to move him out. You have to move them out for safety reasons. Smoking crack and injecting heroin takes any normality out of a home environment. While I’m flower arranging or making tea, he’s either shooting up, going crazy or he’s absent. People kept telling me to leave but I couldn’t leave someone I loved to face it all alone.
I heard singing coming from the bottom of the road somewhere. I thought it was coming from the nearby spiritualist church. I grabbed my camera and headed out. Anything was better than waiting for him to come home. The singing wasn’t coming from the church, but the park across the road. The very park I had run across desperately to get to my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a year and a few months ago (I’m still sober by the way).
I saw some radical born again Christians singing and preaching to some teenagers, who were sat at the top of a climbing frame. I pretended to film a swing and kept my eye on them. I knew what it was all about as I had once preached on the streets as a born again Christian. I remember being a rebellious teen and I also remember being a born again Christian. Both of those groups felt like a part of me. In fact, I think I had become a born again Christian to rebel against my Jewish roots. In any of these groups, we latch onto beliefs and social situations because we want that sense of belonging. I also think this about the dark world associated with heroin/crack/meth addictions. It becomes a place where people have certain roles, where they somehow fit in and have a purpose.
I’m on the coach to the airport, traveling to Jingdezhen as I write this. The views are incredible. Yesterday the whole town of Jingdezhen flooded. I’m worried now.
The born again Christians asked why I was filming a swing and if I wanted to film them instead. I knew this was their way of trying to save me. There I stood, in Chapelfield Park, with Chrisitians performing for me. They told their ‘stories’, which had brought them to follow Jesus.
Then they sang and played the guitar. I remember this happiness. As a teen I needed that joy, that social circle and Christian camps. Then I found acid, weed and Black Sabbath.
Coincidently the main lady used to be an addict. They pray for addicts and the homeless on the streets. Now they were praying for me, a born again backslider with addicts in my life. As they sang, the teens on the climbing frame in the background pointed at them and laughed.
The Christians usually see any interruptions as the devil trying to disturb worship. As their happy-clappy song came to an end, the guitar tapered off slowly, as they began to surround me and speak in tongues, the language of the Holy Spirit.
I pointed my camera towards the floor and bowed my head. I knew the teens were watching. I knew E would be wondering where I was. I felt deeply embarrassed and I’m not sure why. They prayed until I stepped out of the circle. It reminded me too much of the past. They gave me their contact details, told me my art will be blessed and we parted. Later I would get a call from another addict friend of mine. She said her church have been speaking about an artist filming them and the miracles that god works. She knew that it must have been me filming.
I pointed the camera at the teens on the climbing frame and introduced myself. I wore a Nirvana t-shirt that day and they wouldn’t speak to me unless I knew some Nirvana songs (not the obvious ones). I think I impressed them with my 90’s grunge knowledge. We talked about being a ‘straight edge’ (no drugs, drink, usually vegan too). These days it’s the cool thing to be. I asked them how they would deal with a situation if they found out their boyfriend/girlfriend was a heroin addict. All the boys said they would leave immediately. The only girl there said she would try to help.
The third film ‘Mother’, was a large projection on a wall and two armchairs for viewers to sit in. I had filmed this piece with a good friend of mine and a fantastic artist, Patrick Goddard. We went to visit my mother, E came along too. This is the first and only time E and my mother would meet. My mother and her partner/friend have been using addicts for many years. I think E was clean around this time but I can never really be sure. He looked clean but also appeared to be uncomfortable.
Mother and E compare collapsed veins. This is just what we always dream of when Mother and lover meet for the first time.
The conversations revolved around drugs and experiences. At one point E and my mother compared track marks and dead veins in their arms as I filmed. ‘Lets all take acid!’ shouts her partner. As the My mother shook her head and said ‘Once you try opiates, you don’t need anything else’. Playing the footage back during editing, I saw E shake his head in agreement. I noticed so many sad moments in the footage that I had been unaware of at the time. This film loops after 50 minutes. The viewers can chose to join in and hang out and be a part of this evening for as long as they chose to.
The coach suddenly stopped as we had to cross the border and I was told to meet the bus on the other side. Brilliant. I was slightly worried as I’m carrying a knife on me for safety. I crossed the border and I hope I’m on the right bus. I feel so independent right now.
The fourth film was about vanity and excess, ‘Fat Pace/Low Performance’. I had filmed inside a casino in Macau (I stayed here at the beginning of the trip, if you remember?), which is illegal. I also filmed the Billionaires and their cars. Do you remember them from my earlier posts? In fact, one of the billionaires actually turned up to the show. John the art critic also turned up. It was lovely to see him. A large group from the hostel showed up too. They all feel like family to me now. Hopefully I will see them again one day.
Later on in the evening we held a performance. I had hired two female drummers and two dancers. We choreographed a routine and I performed a spoken word piece. All the writing came from recent situations and I developed each piece during a writing course with Ackerman and Daley at Firstsite Gallery, Colchester.
Polite gestures, needs and wants.
Patrick sent an email saying how whenever he thought about the footage being too dark, he broke out in a sweat. Slicing through the marble cake I asked her how she felt about being filmed.
I had a set of questions scrawled on a secret Santa notepad. ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ followed by ‘How do you feel about your diagnosis?’. Push aside the last comment about her selling a portrait I had painted of her for a score and a bag of smack.
The GoPro pointed at the crook of her elbow as she scratched a patch of varnish off the table. Her Tennants swilling racist boyfriend grunts at the questions and moves his castle across the board. Her Russian hat and fur coat clung to her faded vanity.
Pregabs, Subbies and Methadone, a mothers offering for the three hundred grand inheritance she spent on random comers and goers.
Needles and routines stubbed out on a shoe rack. A ‘LOL’ text face up. Blackened veins stopped short.
Rambling narratives of milligrams and the Grateful Dead. Guteral glances and remorseful gaps. Polite gestures, needs and wants. The roll of a fag and a rebellious catholic schoolgirl. Vacuum bag it. Stack it. Put it away.
Plumped up pillow talk on a roundabout. Pastel shades and everything is going to be ok.
Inherent Drive
‘‘Nice isn’t it?’’. Scrambled eggs in her washing machine mouth, cement mixed in a swirl of comfort. Velour sausage-skinned mounds of lard on a sofa. Five times coated varnished fingers crocheting rainbow knots of worry. Squinting through the door crack with a knowing pull. This was the last time.
An echo of Arsenal goals and spit filled curses paired with milky weak tea. Doodling dogs and a fantastic hat competition. Archiving a snapshot of her big toe poking through yesterdays flesh toned tights. Catching a breath through tight knit weaves, as it cuts the blood from the joint.
Sharp injections in the tear duct for flash lit frames of the now. Upright on a chair in a bare room. Gloss coated door frames, catching single hairs of each passerby.
Top down
You’re a bird’s-eye view in the deep end. Arms raised as a signal of security in an empty pool. Sharp darting corners and descending steps loop back to the 80’s.
Half a foot over the diving board, crouching, then sitting on the edge with feet dangling. Clenched toes and curled finger grips. School hall rows, with each hand locked to the underside of her seat. Parting her lips to murmur a scream. Open with a babble and release a gurgle. A nonsensical bubble in warm water rises and falls lyrically on uniformed heads.
Speckled sheets of iridescent dashes laid in blankets over the assembly, streaming through to the pool and over you. Outstretched fingers pop through one by one and grow overhead, towards the soles of her shoes.
Boiled Egg White Eyes
Scampering, slyly rushing
Impulsive frames of unconscious actions
You sit in your drug-fuelled tin-bin car
As I zoom in over the laundry pile and through the blinds
Spinning, turning and back
With your boiled egg white eyes.
The horrors and the rushes of Dawn of the Dead
Flittering wind turbine spikes,
registering at double speed.
Taking and taking and owing some more
The dog spots the rat as she cowers and crawls.
Burrowing, borrowing, recreational park mess.
Towering, hollering and taking the piss.
You needing-ly glared down the path at the rat,
With her scratchy demeanor and scabby tat rattle.
Old NA clichés pushed back in the bushes.
Actions-real-substance and substance misuses.
No independence due to dependence issues
One eye at your brain and the other just hovers,
Glazed in a window and crack up another.
Fixing boy blue who played the piano
By mixing a fix
A flick and a prick
A tick and a flicker
A shit and a shiver
The wretched bent pervert
Stands and delivers.
The shadow, the shudder
The down and the out
Cradle and cover
A fragile new lover
Channel the other
Your jobs and your Mums
Are defended and done.
During the rehearsals the microphone worked perfectly, typically on the night, it kept cutting out. I thought this would be distracting but the audience said they were rooting for me to overcome the technical issues. I ditched the mic and projected my voice. I was shaking and quite emotional.
Leslie and her husband at Wing provided food, great wine (so I’m told) and an amazing rooftop view. The hostel travellers mixed with the art world, performers and billionaires. This evening was perfect. I just wished the main stars of the show, the addicts, could have been there too. The endings to their stories remain in their hands and I’m rooting for them from afar.
Then some of us went clubbing in town. I danced in the rain. The more time I am away, the more I can feel it lifting. The more contact I have with them, the heavier the weight.
At last I can relax at the hostel and begin to plan my research trip around China, which is a bit daunting. I’ve always been known as the sober girl, who doesn’t take drugs and edits videos all the time. The videos are pretty dark but raise some interesting conversations.
So with some help planning, here is my intended route:
The days following the event I ate a lots of good food, slept a lot and went to see the Tian Tan Big Buddha monument on Lantau Island.
Photo by Ella Watson
As we waited for the bus home, we hung out with some cows and took selfies. One of them liked licking us.
DONE.
I packed my bags and said goodbye to everyone at the Yesinn. It’s been like home to me, now I was finally leaving. Enzo walked me to the coach and waved with a smile. I will meet him in Yunnan.
22.
My Grandparents helped to bring me up, seeing as my Dad was a single parent. Male single parents were rare back then. We all lived at number 22. Since then this number has been there whenever I need some support in life. It means I am doing the right thing. It sounds silly but I hope they are guiding me. The cab the the coach was 22HKD. The bus to the plane was number 22. The cab fair to my hostel was 22 RMB. My latte at the hostel is 22 RMB.
I arrived at the airport and checked in my luggage. I was called aside and told that my main luggage had three lighters in it, a chargeable offence. They let me off. I got really paranoid about all the heroin footage I had on my hard drives and laptop but everything was ok.
Shenzen airport is incredible. I am in the future.
I stayed one night in a hostel in the middle of town. It was fairly depressing with dark walls and not many people there. I had root pulled noodles in a backstreet and the locals laughed at my chopstick skills. I thought I was getting quite good, apparently not. They stared at me throughout my meal. It was very noisy and far away from the ceramic district. I moved to another hostel actually in the ceramic district. The social space and location is much better but the air conditioning unit in my room leaks. The floor is covered in water, there’s a constant loud dripping sound and my bedsheets are damp.
Walking around the grounds, I knew I had come to the right place.
I looked at a pottery class around the corner from the hostel and I will be taking part in a group throwing lesson tomorrow. I am most certainly in the right place. A few months ago I was desperate to escape my situation, researched the town of Jingdezhen, now I am here. Isn’t that some kind of miracle?
John Batten introduced me to Caroline Chen, who works at the Pottery Workshop here. We have been communicating and I will meet her soon. When I woke in the morning, I spoke to an American lady, we are sharing the dorm. I asked her what she’s doing here and she said she is an artist, working with video, performance and ceramics. I said that’s a coincidence, so am I. She asked my name and looked surprised when I told her. She said ‘Did you have a show in Milwaukee a couple of years ago?’. I replied with a ‘Yes!’. Apparently we shook hands at my show and she has my poster on her wall for all of her students to see. Yes, it’s a small world.
